


The Devil Doesn’t Exist

by squire



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Developing Relationship, FBI witness protection AU, Gun fights, Kidnapping, M/M, Mind Games, Modern AU, Murder, Mystery, Subterfuge, Usual Suspects - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26423395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squire/pseuds/squire
Summary: Brendol Hux, a rich and untouchable mafia boss, has been murdered, and Armitage Hux is the only witness for the prosecution willing to cooperate. But with the target on his back, can the FBI agent Ben Solo keep him safe? And can he keep himself from getting caught up in the clash of criminal minds in their brutal bid for power?
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 82
Kudos: 414
Collections: Kylux Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Дьявола не существует](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29050038) by [Lenuchka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenuchka/pseuds/Lenuchka), [WTF Kylo and Hux 2021 (Our_Own_Star_Wars)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Our_Own_Star_Wars/pseuds/WTF%20Kylo%20and%20Hux%202021)



> The fabulous art for this fic was created by mudcrayon on Tumblr, and I love it to pieces. Please head over to give them special love.

That one bleak January morning, Ben strode into the office he shared with Poe Dameron and several of the younger guys already in a bad mood. 

Not that his mood would necessarily be any better any given morning. Between the obligatory one beer with Dameron after his hours and his solitary return to an empty flat, Ben’s evenings weren’t anything to brag about the next day. Why Poe insisted on Ben third-wheeling on his unabashed flirting with that sexy bartender at Takodana Brewery, he’d never know. And in the mornings, between deleting yet another voicemail message from his mother’s number and slipping his cardholder with the FBI badge into his breast pocket, Ben had long ago stopped feeling accomplished by either of those. Yes, he was doing all right on his own, and yes, he was serving the society and his fellow citizens. Two hollow victories. The badge had long ago become just as empty as his defiance to stand and smile for the cameras at his mother’s beck and call. 

But that particular day he’d happened upon the morning report before he’d even had his coffee, and what he read there made him want to break something. 

“I take it you’ve seen the news,” Dameron quipped, all unbeatable and annoying cheer as usual, and raised his eyebrows at the coffee spilling from Ben’s mug where he slammed it onto his desk. 

“Brendol fucking Hux,” Ben growled the name of one of the shadiest, most dangerous, and virtually untouchable mob bosses, on this coast at last. Their branch had an entire wall of files on him - the _Commandante_ \- and his cartel, the First Order. And none of it was ever enough to convict him. Ben would know. He tried. 

“He should’ve been hanged long ago,” Ben said. Just because Brendol Hux was never convicted, didn’t make him an innocent man in Ben’s eyes. 

“And instead he dies drowning in his own blood,” Poe retorted. “They haven’t identified the poison yet, but you can bet your ass it wasn’t a suicide.”

“I’d call it a public service,” Ben stated, ignoring the look of reproach on Dameron’s face. “Come on, Poe. Whoever did him in, did the entire East Coast a favor.”

Dameron wasn’t exactly shaking his head to that, although he did frown. “What happened to ‘cool motive, still murder,’ Ben?” Then his expression softened. “I get it. But it could’ve been a kind of a closure for you if we got him the proper way...”

Ben swallowed a large gulp of a too-hot coffee and scowled. “Fuck closure,” he said emphatically. “I pity whoever pissed off the sups enough to get assigned to his case.”

“That alone would make you a prime candidate,” Poe pointed out with a shit-eating grin. 

Ben returned the grin, even though it was more of a grim baring of his teeth. “Pretty sure Holdo wouldn’t let me come even close to investigating the rumored murderer of my old man. Imagine the field day the press would be having.”

“I wouldn’t bet money on that,” another voice sounded from the doorway of a secluded office further down the hallway. Both men swiveled around in their chairs, Poe nearly snapping to attention and Ben making a valiant effort to smooth his face into something more resembling a subordinate with positive work-ethic. Amylin Holdo appraised them both with an unimpressed expression and then addressed Ben. 

“There’s something that’s going to keep you both on the case and away from the press.” 

Ben gave up pretending to look enthusiastic about his job some months ago and he wasn’t about to start now. “With all due respect, Ma’am, we should save us all the time and let it go cold. You know what the mob is like. Everyone’s suddenly deaf and dumb, nobody saw anything. There’ll be no witnesses-”

“There is one,” Holdo interrupted him mercilessly. “And that’s exactly why I need you. We have a chance to finally take down this cartel, and he’s our ticket. We have to keep him alive until he can get lost in the witness protection program, and you have the best training of all of us.”

Ben let his head fall into the puddle of cooling coffee on his desk. He knew that his brief stint with the Marines was going to come around to bite him in the ass one day. 

  
  


*

Armitage Hux was twenty-seven, something that Ben’s mother used to disparagingly call “the eternal student” - currently finishing his second degree, the law on top of the economy. He was an unhealthy-looking young man dressed in a sharp preppy way but overall soft and scholarly, with smooth cheeks and wide-framed reading glasses. Thin as a slip of paper and just as useless, at least from the investigation point of view. 

Apparently, Brendol Hux had recognized that his only son had no guts for the dirty work, and had sent him away for schools, determined to make use of his talent for numbers later on. From what Ben could tell, Armitage had grown up sheltered from most of what went on under the roof of the Hux estate. Yes, he was cooperativeness incarnate, and he did name a fair number of “Father’s friends”, and their prospects at dismantling the cartel brightened considerably, but the investigation murder of the Commandante himself looked just as dire as before. Too many leads leading nowhere, too many loose ends with no chance of ever tying up.

They kept Ben deliberately away from the case but those were the barebone facts he gathered: Armitage had arrived home for the Christmas break, attended a formal dinner party hosted by Brendol for a couple of “family friends”, retired early, and according to the house security camera feed, didn’t leave his upstairs childhood bedroom until the next morning when the servants discovered his father’s cold body in the dining room. They did check - but Armitage had partaken from every dish, wasn’t home yet when the food was prepared, and the only gift he brought in - a bottle of Correllian brandy for his father - was clean. 

And, seeing as all the other guests have immediately disappeared from the face of the earth, probably done in by the same somebody who did away with Brendol, Armitage was reclassified from a suspect to a prized witness and thrust under Ben’s wing. 

Armitage seemed resigned to the bleak prospect of waiting for an increasingly unlikely breakthrough, not minding the safe house hidden in a nondescript dirty back alley, the cranky coffee maker, all this strange limbo of investigation going around them. Perhaps he thought it was the least he could do, waiting it out, with his patience being the only virtue left to him, and Ben couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. 

“Do you miss him?” he asked one evening, for lack of a better thing to talk about. He’d honestly prefer chain-smoking to a conversation, but they were out of cigarettes. 

Armitage shrugged where he was tucked in between the springy sofa cushions, leafing through a book on the history of naval warships for what Ben was sure was the third time already. The selection of books in the safe house reflected the year it was built in, sometime in the seventies, and even if there was wifi, Armitage wasn’t allowed a phone. 

“As a kid, I couldn't wait for the day I’d be sent away to school,” he said eventually, staring through the pages, his brows knitted in self-reflection. “Brendol was… not what you’d call a stellar father.”

The statement was delivered in such a flat tone that Ben envied him. He had spent weeks in therapy after Han’s death and yet he couldn’t make himself say the same, with no shame and no bitterness about it, just the bare fact. 

“But he did pay good money for my education,” Armitage added, as a sort of a gloomy afterthought. Somber and practical, he wasn’t pretending that his academic accomplishments were his alone. Ben could appreciate that. 

In Ben’s experience - although limited by his youth - nobody was just good or evil. Armitage Hux’s biggest sin appeared to be complacency and an almost painful naivety - he must have known that his father’s above-board business would never bring home that kind of money he was obviously used to, judged by the quality of his crisp button-downs and smart slacks, but he had probably learned not to ask. He could’ve even felt affection for that old man, in a weird unconditional way one does with family. Ben had twenty-four years’ worth of experience there. 

“We’ll get the people responsible for his death,” he said reassuringly. He couldn’t give a fuck about closures, but Armitage looked like the kind of a person who did. Neat, orderly, normal. Unburdened by the baggage of failed expectations, shame, and guilt. 

“For justice’s sake?” Armitage chuckled, a little too dryly to be genuine. “Everyone tells me my father was a crook, swindler, with blood on his hands. Was a murder of such a man really an unjust deed?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “You can’t do bad things for good reasons.”

Armitage stared into the book, his head hung low, a strand of ungelled hair flopped over the rim of his glasses. Ben noticed he wasn’t turning any page. 

“I mean it, you know,” Ben interrupted the silence when it became unbearable. Nothing was said, nothing changed, and yet, there was suddenly an air of such palpable grief around the young man that Ben wondered how he’d never noticed it before. He wanted to make sure Armitage knew Ben was on his side.

A short, pained laugh was his reply. “I’d like to see that. I really would. I’d like to see whoever killed my father in court. I’d put a bullet through their head myself if I could.”

Ben startled. He knew, his gut feeling told him there was a depth in this seemingly lukewarm father-son relationship the reports haven’t picked up on, but even he didn’t expect such… intensity. 

For the first time since the start of their involuntary cohabitation, there were tears in Armitage’s eyes. He was older than Ben but somehow looked younger, frail and lonely and beautiful… of screw it. Ben had to keep it together. 

“Hey,” Armitage sniffed, smiling awkwardly at Ben’s stunned expression. “I know I can’t. Bad things for good reason, I heard you. I agree.” He abandoned the book, long arms wrapped around himself instead in an insufficient hug, and Ben wanted to comfort him - but what would be inappropriate. 

“I’m glad you’re here, special agent,” Armitage said, soft and shy, as if he read Ben’s mind. 

“It’s Ben.” That at least, Ben could give him. And then he got up and went to fix himself another cup of coffee before his blush got too dark. He thought he saw Armitage watching him go with a small smile, the most private and precarious thing, the first crack of that quietly enduring exterior, and he wanted to see more of that. 

Fuck, Armitage was beautiful when he smiled. 


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning they had to move again. The department had picked up on a suspicious pattern - someone was searching high and low for Brendol Hux’s son, and slowly but surely closing on their location. This was the third house they had been moved into in the span of three weeks, and Ben was starting to get a bad feeling about it.

“They’re awfully keen on you,” Ben said. “Looks like they’re scared of what you can tell us.”

“Which is disappointingly little,” Armitage remarked dryly as they settled in the back of an unmarked van. 

“They don’t know that,” Ben pointed out grimly. He knew what the FBI was doing there - Armitage was a buzzing fly to draw out the more desperate spiders from the web - and he hated it. He put a steadying hand on Armitage’s shoulder as the van took a sharp turn, and Armitage kept leaning into the touch even after they got back on the straight road. 

“And it doesn’t take away from your bravery,” he added, suddenly compelled to do so. They practically painted a target on Armitage’s back and Ben wasn’t sure how long they could keep him out of the crosshairs. 

“It’s easy to be brave when you feel safe,” Armitage said, barely audible, the acceleration of the van pressing him snugly into Ben’s side. Ben put an arm around his shoulders, to protect the back of his head from the harsh bumps on the road. The weight of the gun in his holster had never felt so right, so reassuring.

*

“What now?”

They’ve just settled into the new safe house. Well, calling it a house was generous - it was a glorified bolt hole. There was only one bedroom and Ben wasn’t looking forward to roughing it on the tiny living room sofa. 

To Armitage’s question, he nodded towards the window. The blinds were down but he could peer through the gaps, past the rungs of a rusty fire escape, to check on the backup team watching the street. 

“Try to relax. We’ll keep you safe.”

“And then?”

Ben knew what he meant. Not in an hour, not tomorrow. After the hearing - whether they’ll videoconference him in or bring him in person - after he gives the official testimony under oath, and after everything would be wrapped and done. 

“The witness protection program will take over after that. New name, new place, new start.”

Armitage Hux will disappear and never look back. Not even Ben would be allowed to know where he went. 

“They’ll probably make you dye your hair for a while,” he joked. 

He was never good at fun so it surprised both of them when Armitage laughed, an unabashed hearty chuckle that sounded like a victory to Ben’s ears. He watched Armitage toss a strand of burned gold strand away from his eyes, sparkling green behind the big frames of his glasses, and thought  _ fuck, I’ve got it bad.  _

“Damn red,” he agreed, “the bane of Hux family-”

-and just like that, the pained pinch between his eyebrows was back. 

“I’m sorry,” Ben rushed to say. Armitage was obviously trying to keep everything inside, and it hurt on a very familiar level. 

“You know, it’s okay to hurt. To grieve. He was your father.”

He didn’t know when he took Armitage’s hand but he noticed that it wasn’t pulled away. 

“I bet your father was at least a good man,” Armitage mumbled against his shoulder and Ben froze. 

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have, I’m so sorry-” Armitage was immediately pulling away, panic in his eyes, and Ben interrupted him before he could work himself into a frenzy. 

“It’s okay - but how did you know?” It occurred to Ben that perhaps this was why the SAC had put him on this job. Special training his ass. 

“You’re too compassionate for a special agent,” Armitage wrung his hands, still anxious as if he expected being punished for speaking out of turn. Ben wondered briefly how much of an asshole Brendol must have been. “And you keep playing with those golden dice when you’re bored, they look vintage and scuffed and old, and you always touch them in your pocket when we talk about my-” his breath hitched and his fingers curled, nails digging into the skin of his palms. 

“Hey, hey. It’s fine.” Ben took his hands again and gently uncurled those slender fingers. 

“You’d make a good detective, you know.” He ran his thumbs across bony knuckles and felt the tension in them slowly dissipate. 

“But you’d have lost the bet,” he joked again with a wry smile. “My dad - he wasn’t the worst, I guess, but he was a little crook. One day he bit off more than he could chew - tried to pull one over the First Order cartel.”

It was Armitage’s turn to freeze. His eyes grew wide, horrified. 

“My father’s people killed your father? Oh my god. You must - you  _ should  _ \- hate me...” 

“No!” Ben barely kept himself from shouting. He would have done anything to never make Armitage cry. Anything to keep those fat, traitorous tears welling up in Armitage’s eyes from falling. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t have done anything. You weren’t even living with him, of course, I don’t blame you.”

“I wish- I wish-” Armitage sobbed in his arms, and his soft hair was right there…

The kiss Ben planted there was purely for comfort, or so he told himself. 

But then Armitage turned his head, dazed, trusting - and his lips were even softer than his hair. 

This wasn’t good, Amilyn Holdo’s voice insisted in Ben’s head. He was breaking a rule. Misconducting. But nothing had ever felt more right than kissing Armitage, bumping his nose awkwardly into the glass frames, holding him in his arms, safe and cherished. Sharing that miserable single bed with him when Armitage asked him, begged him, to stay.

And maybe he would have been a bad son of one Han Solo if he didn’t commit a little bit of misconduct every once in a while, wouldn't he? Never mind that he was also the son of the former Congresswoman Leia Organa who never took a single wrong step in her life, except for her short-lived marriage to Han. Except for having Ben. Better to not think about that. 

It had to be right, especially when Armitage fitted so well against him, his head in the cradle of Ben’s arms. 

“I wanted him to be proud of me when I was little,” Armitage confessed into the warm darkness. 

Ben tangled his fingers in his hair, enamored with them even when the lack of light rendered their golden-red into a muted gray. 

“Me too. It’s funny, he would’ve been so mad if he saw I work for the FBI now.”

Armitage’s fingers traced indistinguishable patterns on the bare skin of Ben’s chest. 

“Is that why you joined? To find out who...”

Ben shrugged. He had to be rational, otherwise the wall of files would haunt his dreams. 

“We never found enough evidence. The cartel was too big.”

“My Father’s wicked empire,” Armitage said with contempt. “I’ll do what I can to help you dismantle it.”

Ben smiled at the solemnity of that oath. Armitage’s determination was endearing but such was the somber truth - his knowledge was woefully lacking and even Ben, out of the loop as he was, could imagine that some bigger fish had already escaped the net. 

Not for the first time, he wondered how Armitage would cope with all the consequences. Having to start anew - losing all the credits from the law school. Having to take a loan to finish his studies instead of his father’s handy money. Losing all his acquaintances, his friends, in just a heartbeat. 

“I wish there was a way to tell Phasma I’m alright,” Armitage murmured sleepily right then. Once again, bumping right into the train of Ben’s thoughts. 

“Hmm?”

“She’s my flatmate. A year above me, about to graduate soon. Top marks, the professors are afraid of her. The closest to a friend I have in the world.” 

Oh. So a law school friend. It made sense. It was a competitive environment, soaked in cattiness and jealousy. Ben didn’t have the heart to tell him that despite the high regard Armitage kept his friend in, said friend had never once contacted the police after the first perfunctory report of her flatmate missing when he didn’t come back after the Christmas break. Brendol Hux’s death only made the news the first day before the FBI snuffed it, the demure headline limited to mentioning his legal business and public persona, and they’ve kept everything under wraps since then. Miss Phasma probably didn’t even make the connection.

“She’ll be worried sick,” Armitage sighed unhappily.

No need to rub that in. Ben knew how it was, having no real friends - Poe would always claim to care about him, drag him out to “have fun”, and then promptly drop him like a stone for his new paramour - and it sucked. 

“She’ll be fine,” he soothed instead. “This will be over soon, and she’s better off kept out of it.” He didn’t need to stress out that any contact to or from outside could put them in danger, and Armitage’s friends, as well.

“Of course,” Armitage grumbled and yawned, wriggling and shifting them around until he was on his back, leaning against the lumpy pillow, with Ben plastered along his side, legs tangled with his, one arm thrown across his waist, and Ben’s head resting against the soft skin of his stomach. “But surely one message wouldn’t hurt. Just let her know I’m fine. After all, I  _ am _ going to live happily ever after and never talk to her again. Doesn’t seem fair.”

“Shush,” Ben admonished him. He knew this was just Armitage’s understandable frustration with their isolation, stillness, and boredom of it all searching for a petty outlet, but he also needed to sleep. He spared a guilty thought to his personal phone, hidden safely in the back pocket of his jeans, currently buried under the heap of clothes next to the bed. He wasn’t supposed to have one, but it was one of the arrangements in which he gave in to his mother. She wouldn’t force him to call her but she would at least want to be able to call him, in case of life or death. Holdo would have his ass if she found out - well, what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Above him, Armitage was nodding off, and basking in a rare sense of safety and comfort, Ben drifted off as well.

*

Outside, the backup team was dozing off in their car. 

Afterward, it was discovered they had no chance. They were dead before they could as much as a peep about the swift and silent attack on the house. 


	3. Chapter 3

Ben woke up to a smell of smoke and the feeling of a cold draft on his nose. The first, that was familiar and expected - he could go through a packet a day on a job like this and Armitage wasn’t doing any better - if there was a way to safely inject caffeine and nicotine directly into one’s veins law students would already have come up with it. No, it was the second that made him open his eyes in a flash and bolt out of bed, hand groping for the gun under his pillow before he could even reorient himself. The draft meant an open window, and the window had no business being open. 

He wasn’t a second too soon. When his vision focused, it was met with the reflection of the bleary morning light on the polished metal of the silenced gun pointed at him from across the room. A man - athletic, black-clad, masked - had just stepped through the window frame. On the floor in front of him, Armitage was trying to sit up from what must have been a knock to the head, eyes swimming with concussion and terror. The fool still had the cigarette clutched between his fingers. Ben’s fingers finally closed around his gun-

“Uh oh, special agent. Leave your gun to her beauty sleep. Hands up,” the man’s voice came through the wool covering his mouth. Ben gritted his teeth and obeyed. If it could buy him time - a moment of surprise - if the hitman was alone, Armitage could still escape.

Except that Armitage was probably too petrified with dread to think that fast. He was just blinking up, drawing fast, shallow breaths through pale lips, and stammering “I just - I just wanted - a bit of fresh air...”

“You thought you could hide from us?” The man cocked his head at Armitage, cold blue eyes in the slit of his mask cruel and mocking. Ben groaned internally. So this man was the  _ speechy  _ type. Probably ordered to deliver a message before the bullet. It didn’t make sense, it’d be more effective to just shoot him and then finish off Armitage, comfortably and without fuss - and fuck, the gun was still trained at him. He tried to subtly move his legs, preparing to jump. He’d get shot in the process but with a bit of luck, he’d give Armitage a head start. 

“Don’t hurt him,” Armitage blurted out in a high, shaking voice, and a part of Ben thought it was  _ sweet _ except it was overpowered by the part that screamed  _ fucking get up and run _ , and then the most unexpected thing happened. 

“Maybe I won’t,” the man laughed and shifted his gun to aim at Armitage. His voice dropped to a deadly chill. 

“Snoke sends his regards.”

A look of utter astonishment passed over Armitage’s face. 

The man’s finger closed around the trigger. 

Ben was already mid-jump when the bullet left the barrel. 

Someone screamed. Something burned, lashing with white-hot pain. He fell forward onto the hitman, barrelling them into the wall, grappling at the hand holding the gun. It went off again, a shower of plaster sprayed from the ceiling. He wrenched it up, back, furious blue eyes met his own for a second, he growled and pushed - the gun went off for the third time, and the body between Ben and the wall sagged. 

Ben staggered away, grasping the gun now. The hand he wrestled it out from fell limply. 

The wool at the side of the hitman’s neck was scorched and a black sogged stain was spreading around it.

The plaster dust from the cracked ceiling was still raining on the cheap lino floor with a soft rustle. The walky-talky on the bedside table was blinking innocently, silent. Nobody warned them. Behind him, Armitage was curled into a ball, quietly sobbing. 

“Shit, Armitage-” Ben wheeled around and cursed again when the motion pulled at his torso, shooting bright pain through him. His knees buckled under him as the adrenaline seeped away from his bloodstream. 

“Ben!” Armitage scrambled to his knees, shuffling over to him. “You’re hurt!”

He looked down on his side. Blood was dripping in a sluggish rivulet down his leg. It didn’t even hurt much. He pressed his hand on it -  _ fuck _ . Okay. That hurt. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

“You’re bleeding- you were  _ shot- _ ” Armitage was working himself up into hysterics. 

“Shhh. It only grazed me.” He switched the safety on and tossed the half-emptied gun on the bed. Armitage shook his head violently as if trying to clear his shock-muddled head, and then finally got up and stumbled unsteadily into the tiny bathroom and back. In his hands was the first aid kit, pretty much the only clean thing in this entire shithole of a flat since it came with them. He took out the disinfectant, gauze, two rolls of bandages, and set to work. 

“Huh. You know what you’re doing,” Ben said appreciatively when the compression bandage closed around his middle just right, not too tight and not too loose. He touched Armitage’s cheek and felt the shaky smile. 

“I was a Boy Scout for honest six months before my anxiety and panic attacks got the better of me,” he replied, brows furrowing adorably in the focus on his task.

Ben laughed. The sting in his side was down to a tolerable nuisance. He became aware of the cold January air prickling his sweat-clammy naked skin and got up to close the window. 

“I’m so sorry,” Armitage started again. 

Ben shook his head. “I shouldn’t have slept so soundly. We were both careless. This was a professional. I have to call our people to extract us.” He put on his shirt and jeans, grabbed the radio, and did as he said. The call over, he returned his attention to the case at hand. 

He wasn’t regretting taking out the threat but damn, the man could have just been the lead they needed, if they could make him talk. As it was, there was only one thing he’d let slip. A name that so far, at least what Ben knew about the case, hadn’t come up in the investigation. 

“He said, ‘Snoke sends his regards.’ Any idea who that might be?”

Armitage’s breath hitched. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a few gasping inhales. Ben almost asked what was wrong when he remembered. Panic attacks. All this excitement couldn’t have been good. 

“Shit, do you need-” but Armitage was already flapping his hand in a universal  _ no thanks _ gesture, swallowing and blinking his eyes open. The calm, practical look in his eyes was back. 

“I think I remember Father mentioning him. He’s… just an accountant.” He sounded puzzled, almost outraged. “I thought… he’s supposed to handle Father’s sponsorships and fundraisers. At least that’s how he called it, fuck knows what it really was.”

Ben nodded, feeling a rush of excitement. If this man handled Brendol Hux’s finances… he might have all the information needed to bring the cartel down for good. “He obviously wants to take over the organization. He must be afraid of what you could tell on him.” 

“He’s terribly old,” Armitage murmured as if  _ that _ was the biggest affront to this mysterious Snoke’s existence. Ben couldn’t help the fond smile spreading over his face. 

“Something actually useful?”

“His offices are at the top of the Supremacy Tower, downtown.”

*

The car swerved into a sharp turn and Ben swayed on the back seat, momentarily thrown off balance as he was pulling a body fit shirt over his head, contorted in the cramped space. Poe helpfully balled up the plain cotton one Ben wore in the safe house, his nose scrunched in disgust at the smell, and tossed it under the seat. Then he handed Ben the bulletproof vest and helped him with the straps. 

“Cute band-aid,” he remarked when he saw Armitage’s handiwork. “You sure you don’t want to sit this one out?”

Ben shook his head. “It’s only a scratch.” He tried not to imagine that the trajectory of that same bullet would have ended in Armitage’s head if Ben didn’t jump in the way. Thank God he woke up in time. 

“A nasty wake-up call,” Poe grumbled. “We still have no idea how they could find out where you were hiding.” 

Ben nodded grimly. Somebody could be selling them, leaking information. That was a close call.

“How did the lawyer boy take it? No nervous breakdown?”

Ben shook his head. Armitage, despite his frail nervous disposition, was coping with the stress admirably. Ben suppressed a smile at the memory of his absolutely stupefied expression when the hitman turned the gun on him. Human nature was so quirky sometimes.

“I think it never really registered with him in how much danger he was until that moment. He looked so surprised that he was about to die...” 

Poe chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment before he shrugged. “Yeah, fools like that sometimes forget to be afraid when they should be.”

Armitage had been whisked away in another car, with nothing more than a quick hug to Ben. It warmed Ben's heart how tightly Hux clung to him, even for a moment, an unspoken question in his eyes: would they see each other again? Ben hoped so. As soon as they apprehended Snoke. 

They were approaching the Supremacy, two other teams from different directions already on their way too. It was just a matter of time Snoke learned about the failed mission of his hitman, and they wanted to take advantage of every second of it. That’s why Ben was currently trying to suit up for an assault in the backseat of an armored car going 90 miles per hour. 

The holster back in place, Poe handed him his gun. “Ready?”

Ben rolled his shoulders and patted himself down. “Ready and set.” Then he frowned and tried to twist and bend enough to peer under the seat. With his wide shoulders, tough bulletproof vest on, and the small space, it was impossible. 

“Whoa, why are you so squirming? A squirrel got into your pants?”

“I think my phone slipped out in all that wriggling,” he muttered to himself. It wasn’t in his back jeans pocket anymore, and he made sure he hadn’t left it in the compromised safe house. The cleanup crew would kick up a fuss if they found it and Holdo would yell at him for hours. 

“Your com?” Of course, Poe must have thought he misheard. Ben rolled his eyes, deciding to leave it be, and tapped his breast pocket with the com with a silent grin as the noise of braking tires drowned out anything he might have added. 

They were nearly there. 

And then both their coms crackled to life almost simultaneously. Poe was quicker getting it, his earpiece already in place - Ben would leave him to deal with it anyway, he was always the less talkative of the two, less eager to snap to attention to whatever new orders. He busied himself attaching his bodycam and making sure it was functioning when the sharp intake of breath next to him made him turn his head at last. 

Poe’s eyes, dark under furrowed brows and uncharacteristically worried, met his. 

“They found the car that was taking our witness to a new place,” he said. “T-boned, both our guys shot.”

All his breath left Ben on one word. “Armitage?”

Poe’s eyes narrowed at him briefly before he shook his head. “No blood on the back seat. Whoever took the young Hux, they wanted him alive and whole.”

Their car, flanked by reinforcements, bumped against the curb in front of the Supremacy Tower. Its sixty-four floors loomed above them, blue-tinted windows glinting like a menace. 


	4. Chapter 4

Ben trailed after Poe as they piled into one of the public elevators, the tech backup on their team taking over the building’s security and quickly rerouting the control of CCTV and key-card systems to their own terminal. Poe’s radio kept chattering as they briefed them in on the layout and escape routes. The offices of Alistair Snoke were located on the topmost floor, accessible only by a private elevator. The cabin showed in the system as empty and stuck on the sixty-fourth level, not responding to any override. They would have to take the stairs. 

“Understood.” Poe was talking with the guys, Ben listening on to catch the important details. The radio crackled again as a new voice appeared on the frequency. 

“Remember that we need this Snoke guy alive,” Holdo said in a tone that broke no argument. Ben rolled his eyes. Of course, he knew they needed him for the prosecution. Going by what the hitman said, Snoke was now probably the one controlling the First Order or at least making sure he would be. 

“Should just smoke him out,” he muttered as he pushed open the glass door from the fire escape stairwell. A short stretch of a corridor led around a corner into what must have been the main hallway. The armored unit filed out past them and assumed their positions, ready to cover them. 

The floor seemed very quiet, not even the hum of electronics that Ben came to associate with office spaces coming through the heavy doors and thick carpet. It unnerved him. The place was too spacious, too luxurious for just a small accounting firm. The layout was complicated and confusing, corridors branching out and far too many corners to hide behind, more a fortress than an office space. He had a bad feeling-

He turned, more on instinct than moved by any actual noise, just in time to spot one of the wall panels gaping open, revealing a hidden door. 

Poe shouted and staggered against the wall, clutching his right arm. The shot that got him was barely more than a tiny  _ pop _ . Ben lifted his gun and fired a shot into the darkness, blindly.

Then they were everywhere. 

Dark nondescript clothes, dark masks - just like the man who broke through the window of the safehouse. Noise erupted in a hell of warning shouts and gunfire. Ben ducked behind a wall, crawling backward and dragging Poe with him. Suddenly he tripped over something. 

A leg. A body. Sharp grey suit over fitted body armor, like a high-end bodyguard. Dried blood clung to the round hole in his skull. Ben brought a hand to his neck. Already going cold. 

Another one, no visible bullet wounds but his head lolling at an unnatural angle to the rest of his body, lay a few steps away. 

“What the...”

“Someone else got here before us,” Ben growled. Maybe, a thought flashed through his head,  _ these _ were Snoke’s guards, and the black commando raising hell in the hallway was working for whoever wanted to take over in the scramble for the top.

A bullet lodged itself in the wall opposite them, spraying them with plaster dust, but overall the sounds of the fight seemed to be moving away, back to the stairwell end, ignoring the two agents crouched in a rapidly spreading puddle of blood. Dammit. Poe was pale as a sheet and already tugging at the loops of his belt.

Ben took a precious few seconds to lean over him, shielding him with his broad back, and looping the belt around Poe’s upper arm in a tight knot. The bullet must have nicked a vein. The tourniquet would prevent the blood loss but Poe was out of commission anyway. He was always a shit left-hand shooter. 

“You’ll be fine,” Ben assured him, propping him up against the wall in the relative cover of a massive receptionist’s desk. 

“No shit,” Poe laughed weakly. But Ben didn’t laugh back. Through the lull in the racket - through a majestic, padded door on their right - he thought he heard voices. 

“You thought your new friends could help you?” rasped a voice Ben didn’t know, a hollow, condescending, malicious croak of someone rather old. 

“Give up,” said the other voice, strained with a forced calm that belied inner panic, “the FBI is all over the building. You can’t get out.” 

And that voice, Ben would know anywhere.

“Ben, wait-” but Ben wasn’t listening to Poe. He kicked down the door and threw himself into the room, gun raised in both hands. 

The sight that welcomed him had chills running down his spine. 

The room was spacious, luxuriously furnished. An entire wall was taken up by shelves full of neatly organized folders. In the middle of them, a rectangular space was occupied by a large in-built terrarium. A thick, grey-scaled snake was curled up lazily under a powerful heating lamp, only a slight turn of its head indicating that it was aroused by the commotion, observing the room with round, unblinking eyes. A little to the side of it, a tall bald man with a beady, venomous stare not unlike that of the snake, was leaning against the shelves, clutching a trembling Armitage as a shield in front of himself and holding a thin, long-bladed letter opener against his throat. 

“Drop it,” Ben commanded. The gunfire outside had ceased a moment ago. His earpiece buzzed with the message from their operative that the floor was secured and clear. “It’s over, holding a hostage won’t help you. There’s no way out.”

The old man’s - Snoke’s - face contorted in anger, creasing his patchy skin into a web of deep wrinkles. The top of his head was shiny and peeling, and the same patches of scarred, aggravated red were covering his knuckles and wrists. Ben sniffed - the air was permeated with the smell of grease and something herbal, something medicinal. Snoke must have had a bad skin condition. 

“I think you  _ will _ let me go,” Snoke hissed. “You want  _ him _ alive, don’t you?”

Armitage was holding very still, barely breathing. 

“You okay?” Ben asked quietly. Armitage swallowed and flinched when the motion pushed his Adam’s apple against the edge of the blade. 

“Y-yes,” he breathed. “They’ve taken me from the car, I-”

“Oh-ho-ho,” Snoke coughed up a laugh as if he had a rattlesnake stuck in his throat. “I see this little bastard has you wrapped around his little finger. I’ll never understand how Brendol could think you were weak-willed, my dear Armitage. But then, Brendol was a fool, wasn’t he?”

Two more agents filed into the room behind Ben, stepping to the side to get Snoke into a crossfire. Snoke narrowed his eyes at them and Ben saw the tightening of his fingers around the knife. He lifted his hand. The men stopped, waiting. 

“Let him go,” Ben reiterated calmly. Holdo’s order echoed through his head - catch Snoke alive. “We can negotiate what happens to you, but you have to cooperate.”

“You want me to spill all the secrets?” Snoke mocked again. “The First Order is  _ mine _ ,” he snarled. “I observed its every motion, every transaction, every corrupted cop, every blackmailed politician, every scallywag businessman, I know their every intent. And I suppose I can tell you a pretty secret right now-” he sneered down at Armitage - “I can tell you all about this little-”

Armitage gasped as a thin red line appeared across his throat, where the blade just began to nick the skin, and Ben didn’t even think. He pulled the trigger. 

The knife fell from Snoke’s hand. His body went limp and sagged over Armitage’s shoulder, a round hole between those cruel, reptilian eyes. Armitage screamed and flailed - and then he stumbled backward and crashed them both into the wall of shelves, shattering the terrarium under their combined weight. The heating lamp cracked in a burst of electric sparks. 

“Shit-”

“Get him out-”

“Those files, guys-”

Ben caught the smell of burning paper a fraction of a second before the entire wall of files went up in flames. He could hear the dull  _ puff _ of displaced air and feel the heatwave hit him - it was almost like a small blast. Holy fuck - then he remembered. Snoke had a skin condition, those folders and files he handled daily were probably covered in a layer of paraffin. And now they were consumed in a rapidly spreading fire. 

Fuck. He’d have time to beat himself up over the destroyed files later. Now he grabbed Armitage’s hand and pulled him out of the room. 

*

“You had the order not to shoot!”

Ben held his chin high and defiant in the face of Holdo’s fury. 

“I’ve evaluated the situation and made a decision-”

“Shut up, Solo!” Amylin Holdo snapped. “With Snoke dead and all the financial files destroyed, a good half of the cartel will never be brought to justice and it’s your fault! You had one job-”

“My job,” Ben interrupted her, not giving a fuck about subordination any more, “was to protect Armitage Hux. Which I’ve done. You may be fine with sacrificing the life of a witness - of an  _ innocent human being _ \- for a clean solution of your case - well, I’m fucking not. I’m done.”

The badge clattered against Holdo’s desk. He put his gun next to it more carefully but with the same resolution, and then he turned and walked out. 


	5. Chapter 5

_ “Hey? Ben? It’s… it’s me. Armitage." _

Ben pressed his phone closer to his ear to block out the noise of the subway and felt his heart quicken - half in excitement, half in concern. 

“Hey, carrot top.” He grinned when he heard the amused snort. “Should you be calling me?” After all the mess at the Supremacy Tower, he half thought he would have to give Hux his day-to-day phone number but then he found his secret phone in his jacket pocket, where it’s been all along. Funny how you misplace things when you dress in a hurry. 

He only gave Hux his number out of a foolish hope - before they whisked him off into another stage of the witness protection scheme. Of course, Hux wouldn’t call him. He shouldn’t, really. But it was nice to have a bit of hope. A hope that suddenly didn’t seem so foolish anymore.

_ “I’m settling down… it’s kind of boring. Lonely.” _

Ben made a sympathetic noise. The past couple of weeks fit that description on his end, too. 

_ “I was wondering… would you care for dinner? With the view of the Golden Gate?” _

“Jesus, you can’t just  _ say _ things like that into a phone,” Ben kept his voice down, even as he knew that the danger was basically nonexistent. The only other person who knew this number was his mother. 

_ “You’re right. I’ve got…. things… I’d rather say to you in person,” _ Armitage said and damn if his tone didn’t make Ben suddenly hot all over. That prim, neat, naive boy could be a devilish tease when the mood struck him and Ben loved it. 

Fuck, he loved  _ him _ . 

And what was there keeping him on the East Coast anyway? 

*

Poe Dameron let his arm fall down, knuckles smarting from repeated knocking, and listened. There was no sound coming from the inside of Ben’s flat. No sound at all, not even the faint echo of the traffic outside coming through the window which he always left open a crack when he was at home. 

So Ben wasn’t just not picking up his phone. He wasn’t home as well. Hasn’t been for the past three days, unless he somehow managed to sneak past Poe’s attempts at a visit. 

Poe rubbed his face. This was bad. He knew Ben - the man could get stuck deep in the most awful moods. Damn the doctors for not releasing him from the hospital just a bit earlier. 

Poe understood why Ben was reprimanded for the case - but making him leave the force was surely a step too far. Poe  _ knew _ him. He knew that under all that disillusioned facade and a serious problem with authorities, Ben was a good man. Caring, and loyal. There was a reason Poe wasn’t a bloodless corpse stored away in the headquarters mortuary by now. Ben would always do what he believed was right, even if it meant exposing himself to the fire to help his buddy, and his moral compass was strong.

They shouldn’t have let him come even close to that case, ever. It was too much of a grey zone. Right up Holdo’s alley, with her political ambitions, but too much to handle for someone as simply  _ good _ as Ben. 

But then, nobody else would have willingly jumped into the path of a bullet to protect the man they were ordered to protect. 

Poe shifted his grip on the parcel he was carrying as he walked down the stairs. His right arm still wasn’t quite all there. He got into his car and tossed it on the empty passenger’s seat next to him, frustration fuelling his bad mood. The paper wrapping tore and the fabric inside spilled out. 

Sighing, Poe picked it up and smoothed it out. Three days ago, the cleanup crew returned to him Ben’s shirt found on the floor of one of the armored cars they used in the attack on the Supremacy Tower. He was using it as an excuse to visit Ben. Besides, it smelled. 

Well, perhaps the next day. Ben didn’t have many friends, as far as Poe knew, he couldn’t be sulking away on someone’s couch forever. Poe folded the shirt properly to fit it into the torn wrapping…

...when he noticed a strange thing. 

There wasn’t a hole in the fabric. Not even a single tear. 

He remembered exactly where the bullet grazed Ben’s side - he’d joked about the bandage, even. But there was no corresponding hole in the shirt currently in his hands. 

It made no sense. Poe knew that smelly git, had been on countless overnight stakeouts, undercover missions, all-nighters with just an hour or two to crash on the couch with him together - the man always slept “battle-ready”, dressed and ready to jump and get moving at a moment’s notice. 

Why would he sleep without his clothes while on duty? Unless…

_ Armitage _ , he’d called their witness when he learned about his kidnapping. Not  _ Hux _ , not  _ lawyer boy _ like they used to joke about him before Ben went to isolation with him. 

Fuck. They should’ve never let Ben with his big stupid heart onto the case. All kinds of trouble awaited when one got emotionally involved-

Poe stared ahead of himself, the damp February cold slowly seeping into his bones as he sat in the car, engine off. An entirely different time and day were replaying themselves inside his head.

_ He looked so surprised that he was about to die… _

It did strike Poe as odd, at the time - but they were in the middle of the action. But since then, one more odd thing kept nagging at the back of his mind:

How did the hitman find them? 

They had been hunted, yes, but Poe knew the FBI was always several steps ahead. Until, all of a sudden, there was a hitman exactly at the right window. 

Another buried memory resurfaced with startling clarity. 

_I think my com_ _slipped out with all that wriggling,_ Ben had grumbled, trying to peer under the seats as they were approaching the Supremacy Tower. At least, that’s what Poe thought he heard over the noise of the fast ride and his own radio beeping like crazy. But Ben’s radio was in his front vest pocket. What he actually said was… _my phone_. 

He must have had a phone in the safe house, the idiot. Phones were dangerous, they could be hacked, hide a position tracker...

Or - Poe paused - what if it was  _ Hux _ who tipped off the hitman? What if Hux opened that window for him on purpose, to kill Ben and let himself be ‘kidnapped’... but why would he do it?

Unless...

Poe knew all the evidence by heart - he had personally boxed all of it into the cold cases archive two days ago. There was no sign on the security footage from the night of Brendol Hux’s murder that would indicate that the recording had been doctored. 

But also there was no way to know for sure that it wasn’t. The indoor camera system at the Hux mansion didn’t use digital seals on the individual time-stamped files.

What if young Hux killed his own father to seize the control of the First Order and used the police to keep himself safe while the FBI would do the dirty work for him - arresting those who young Hux didn’t need anymore? 

And then, when he deemed his own little scheme successful, he called his contacts to send a ‘hitman’ to extract him. Except he miscalculated. Just like everyone dismissed the young weakling of a son, Hux dismissed the old, frail accountant. 

Poe was woken out of his trance by the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk next to his car. A small, elderly, but exquisitely dressed woman was approaching the ratty door to the building, a frowning face turned up to the second-floor windows. Ben’s windows. Something in her face seemed vaguely familiar - those dark eyes, stubborn brow. Poe shot out of the car before he could think twice. 

“Mrs. Solo?”

She drew herself up with a haughty glare, sweeping over Poe down and back up - and whatever details she picked on, made her affronted face soften with a little smirk. 

“I see my son was as forthcoming with details about himself as ever,” she said in a calm, surprisingly gentle voice. “I’m Leia Organa, Mr. Solo was my late ex-husband. And you’re Ben’s former colleague, are you not?”

“Poe Dameron, ma’am,” Poe introduced himself, mentally cringing. The name Organa  _ definitely  _ rang a bell. 

“Mr. Dameron,” she acknowledged with a small nod. “Do you perhaps know where my son is?” There was the slightest tremor of anxiousness beneath that well-bred accent. “He’s not returning my calls.”

“Same,” Dameron stifled a curse under his breath. “And I just realized something terrible.”

*

They sat in a small cold office next to the archive basement, Organa’s hands wrapped around a paper cup of untouched coffee, and the computer screen in front of them replayed the footage from Ben’s bodycam from the day of the attack on the Supremacy Tower. 

“...you see, when we came in, we of course expected Snoke would have security… but the small army he had there still took us by surprise for a moment.”

He watched a grainy, shaky version of himself go down after a shot to the arm and winced. 

“And then we realized that someone broke in already before us.” The camera skimmed over the two bodies in suits as Ben examined them briefly before turning back to help Poe. “We thought that there were more parties interested in the takeover because we thought it was Snoke who kidnapped young Hux from our car, but now I’m not so sure-”

He paused the footage, thinking furiously. “Dashcam. There was a dashcam in that car. I didn’t review it, I was in the hospital, it must be in here-” he dug into the box momentarily before he fished out another memory stick. 

“You think Armitage Hux engineered his kidnapping in order to get to Snoke before the FBI, to eliminate the last threat to himself,” Organa said slowly. 

“Yup,” Poe agreed, watching the fish-eye distorted recording of the dashcam. He saw the moment the car was hit and spun, he saw another car stopping just out of the frame, black, tinted windows - winced at the splatter of red that lashed across the windshield - and then, at the very edge of the frame, he spotted a figure. It was just a glimpse, a second, someone coming around the attacker’s car to slide back into the driver’s seat - he rewound it and paused. 

Tall, blonde woman in a sharp grey suit. The same as the bodies in Snoke’s hallway. 

“She was the driver but she wasn’t found dead up there. She must have waited in the car, somewhere around the Tower,” Organa remarked. 

Poe brought a fist down on his thigh, hard. “Dammit, I know her!” he exclaimed. It all came back to him - that tall, elegant, disinterested law student he questioned briefly when she made the perfunctory report about her flatmate not coming back from Christmas break. He explained it to Mrs. Organa. How nobody thought twice about checking on her again because she was, obviously, several thousand air miles away. 

“But how did she know when and where to get him?” Organa shook her head, frowning. “You said that young Hux was with you for weeks...”

“I think he stole Ben’s phone,” Poe laughed bitterly. “Ben hugged him briefly before we set out. I didn’t even know he had one, it all came together for me only this morning. He wasn’t fucking supposed to have one on duty!”

Leia Organa cleared her throat. “Um. I’m afraid I’m to blame for that… though I honestly didn’t expect him to actually carry it where he shouldn’t.” She offered a weak smile. “I can give you the number if it helps. Ben isn’t returning my calls, but maybe he will pick up when he sees yours...”

Poe wordlessly typed the number into his phone and pressed Call. No answer. He let it ring and turned back to the computer screen, resuming the reel from the Supremacy Tower. 

Armitage stood there, white as a sheet, slightly sagging in Snoke’s grip, the knife’s blade against his throat. 

“Suppose he got there, but his men didn’t make it through Snoke’s little army… And then Snoke figured out he was the ticket to get out of the building.”

“But why would he then try to kill him? Ben said that if he didn’t shoot Snoke would’ve slit Hux’s throat.” Organa murmured. Poe agreed with her. It didn’t make sense. Hux was Snoke’s only hostage, why would he kill him too early... 

Snoke was boasting in the recording, taunting and threatening, until he got to the abrupt end-

_ “-and I can tell you all about this little-” _

Poe blinked. Stopped the reel and rewound back a second. Zoomed in and pressed play again. 

There it was. The shift in Armitage’s jaw - the way he slightly put his weight  _ forward _ \- just enough for the blade to nick his skin, for the blood to well to the surface. Snoke’s hand didn’t move - it was Hux who did. 

It was Ben’s gun that killed Snoke, but Armitage Hux might have as well pulled the trigger. 

Organa watched the recording, eyes wide. Poe was sure she saw it too. Hux’s elbow suddenly going up - masked by flailing and screaming, but as sure as hell directing Snoke’s lifeless body to fall into the terrarium and breaking the lamp that would set all the files on fire.

“It was him,” Poe breathed out. “It was him the whole time.”

And Armitage Hux was now gone, given a new identity. Poe would bet his shoes that if he were to inquire with the witness protection program, he’d find that Hux’s handler was found dead - probably in a seemingly unrelated car accident - and Hux would be gone again. 

Poe’s phone on the table beeped with an incoming text message. It took Poe a second to realize what it meant. Then he grabbed it and swiped at the screen with shaking fingers. Organa watched him, barely breathing.

_ Don’t worry about Ben, agent Dameron. I take care of what is mine. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is it! If you liked the story (or the twist), please drop a comment and also enjoy the awesome art of mudcrayon [on their Tumblr here!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/mudcrayon/629253536692207616)


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